[EOL]. End of Life - Impulse Festival 2025

Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM)

[EOL]. End of Life

Performative Installation in Virtual Reality

“The story in ‘[EOL]. End of Life’ is a touching one. But the subtext of this work, which alerts us to digital VR’s ability to overwhelm and manipulate us as a medium, sets off all the alarm bells.” Helmut Ploebst, STANDARD, 26.9.2024

What will be left of us back n the world when we no longer exist? Might we even live forever in the privatised metaverse?
In their artwork, Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM) explore death, loneliness and the lasting traces that people leave behind them. Following on from the 2021 hyperlink installation ‘404_DEADLINK’, which was commissioned by the Impulse Festival, in ‘[EOL]. End of Life’ the artist duo looks at a possible and maybe none too distant future and transports the audience into the virtual landscape of ruins in a defunct metaverse: using VR headsets, the audience become outsourced freelancers of the fictional billion-dollar company “Imaginary Reality Landscapes” and take on the role of the staff who decide which digital remnants have a place in the richly detailed parallel realities of tomorrow and which will be deleted entirely. However, in doing this they also have to make decisions about irretrievably deleting human traces that can still be found in the world of three dimensions…
With the intense and immersive performance experience ‘[EOL]. End of Life’, which received its world premiere at brut Wien, Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM) have also been invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in May this year and will be guests shortly afterwards at Impulse in both Mülheim an der Ruhr und Düsseldorf.

Dates

18 June, 16:00–20:00

19 June, 15:00–23:00

20 June, 17:00–23:00

21 June, 15:00–23:00

3 July, 17:00–23:00

4 July, 17:00–23:00

5 July, 15:00–23:00

6 July, 15:00–19:00

Tickets

Regular price: 16 €
Reduced price: 11 €

Individual 90-minute time slots can be booked on each performance day.

→ Ticket shop

Venue

Mülheim an der Ruhr; FFT Düsseldorf

Duration

90 minutes

Language

English

Credits

Direction, Story: Victoria Halper & Kai Krösche (DARUM)
With: Victoria Halper, Kai Krösche und James Stanson
3-D Architecture, Design (Virtual Reality): Mark Surges
Music: Arthur Fussy
Design (Live-Performance): Matthias Krische
Texts: Kai Krösche
Character Design, Animation, Costume Design, Photogrammetry, Motion Capturing, Videos: Victoria Halper
3D Object Animation: Kai Krösche, Mark Surges
Creative Coding, Motion Capturing, Lighting Design, Enhanced Sound Design: Kai Krösche
Testing, Artistic Feedback: David Rosenberg, Matthias Krische, Matthias Seier, Arthur Fussy, Armin Kirchner et al.

Thanks to Götz Dipper, Bernd Lintermann, Tina Lorenz, Felix Mitterberger, Dorcas Müller, Susanna Neueder MSc., James Stanson and Morgane Stricot

A co-production by DARUM and brut Wien. Funded by the City of Vienna Cultural Department (MA 7) and the Austrian Ministry for the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.

Work on the artistic concept for ‘[EOL]. End of Life’ was supported by a scholarship at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) Karlsruhe.

Details on Accessibility

Information about the venue

Spatial access

From 18.-21.06. the event takes place in Mülheim an der Ruhr. We will publish the exact location at a later point.

From 3.-6.7. the event takes place at FFT Düsseldorf.
The FFT is located on the first floor of KAP1. You can reach the first floor by lift - the floor is marked in Braille and tactile on the buttons. The lift only stops on the first floor during regular opening hours (starting one hour before each event).

The doors in the FFT are not self opening and are sometimes very difficult to open. If you need assistance getting around the building, please speak to us on site or contact us in advance.

Once you are on the 1st floor, the foyer and the event rooms are accessible without any steps. Stage 1 has an additional gallery that can only be reached via staircase from the foyer.

Distances

At FFT Düsseldorf:
Paid car park approx. 170 metres (UFA Palast).
Distance to ‘Düsseldorf Mainstation’ approx. 150 metres. Depending on the means of transport and platform, the station has a lift and escalator. Current information on operations at bahnhof.de.

Audience situation

It is a VR performance for which visitors move individually in a defined part of the room. There is no seating available during the visit.

Informationen on Comprehension and Perception

Language

English spoken language and written English. Text-heavy.

Individual time-slots

Each visitor starts individually, at intervals of 10 minutes. You determine the starting time when you buy your ticket. There is an individual introduction to the use of the VR technology.

Content Notes und sensory stimuli

We have not yet put together any specific information about the content of this event.

Please contact us if you are missing any relevant information to help you plan your visit.

Informationen on the general organisation

Assistance on site/pick-up service

If you require a pick-up service from the nearest public transport stop or car park, please contact us before your visit at the festival.

Tickets

The VR-Installation can only be visited individualley. Your companion will need to book an individual time slot or will not be able to experience the VR-performance. For festival tickets, you can choose to pay the reduced ticket price. Please select which price you can and wish to pay.
Tickets for 18.6.
Tickets for 19.6.
Tickets for 20.6.
Tickets for 21.6.

Tickets for 3.7.
Tickets for 4.7.
Tickets for 5.7.
Tickets for 6.7.

Contact

We would like to cater for individual requirements for a festival visit (seating, early boarding, pick-up from public transport, etc.) as best we can.

As a festival team, we have irregular working hours, so our availability is not guaranteed at fixed office hours:

E-Mail: barrierefreiheit@impulsefestival.de
WhatsApp-Messenger: +49 (0) 1575 5804 172
Telefon: +49 (0) 202 698 27 280 (You’ll reach an answering machine to arrange a return call. Please leave your name, telephone number and your request.)